First let me state that I feel like the first few weeks of college football is the absolute best time to make money betting games (if it were legal). No one knows how good anyone is, matchups are all out of conference, and there is no season betting trend to use to set the lines. Every year that I have ended up finishing ahead, it is because I struck gold in the first few weeks, then played conservative the rest of the season.
The Cougars @ Cowboys line opened at -14, and has been steadily climbing since. If you are like me and saw that -14 and immediately started drooling and dry-humping your wallet, you should thank Phil Steele and the like for picking Oklahoma State to finish dead last in the south with a losing record. While that may happen (and hell since I'm disclaimer-ing, losing to Wash St and Boone deciding to tear down the new suites may technically happen), this line opened way lower than would have been expected. I wouldn't be surprised to see it around -18 by kickoff... and I would still take the Pokes. While I am not guaranteeing the cover or anything (it is gambling), in my opinion the line is too low for a team with the talent Oklahoma State has, matched up against a team that finished 2009 in the bottom 5 in every major statistical category.
But it is a new year, and it is the first week of the season, and as I said above, the odds aren't in anyone's favor yet, so maybe you love the Washington State bet at +15.5. The point is, when you scroll up and down that list of games in the link above, I guarantee that at least 10 great bets stick out to you. That only happens for the first few weeks of the season, in October you are lucky to find one game that you think is a great bet.
The O/U of 49 is a more difficult bet I think. While I'm confident in Oklahoma State covering the 15.5, a lot of my confidence comes from the belief that the defense will hold Wash St to 14 or less (they only scored more than 2 TD's once last season, and that was against SMU). The Cougs do get RB James Montgomery back from injury which could allow them to be less one dimensional, but outside of that it is essentially the same attack they ran last season, just with more experience. So I am looking at a 10-14 point output from the Cougs, and somewhere in the mid 30's for the Cowboys as they adjust to the new scheme. This puts the total points right around that 50 point mark, making this bet a coin toss in my mind. For the hell of it, I'll go with the over as maybe some first-game turnover issues on both sides lead to short fields for the opposition, and some inflated scoring.
What do you think gamblers?